


Selfish By Nature

by AsuraCalling



Category: Original Work
Genre: Empathic Illnesses, F/M, Gen, M/M, Physical/Psychic Empath, Sectoral Heterochromia, Shapeshifters - Freeform, Supernatural - Freeform, Were-Creatures, Witches and Wizards
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 03:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6104068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsuraCalling/pseuds/AsuraCalling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They call her Sheba. The Shadow Shaman, the prodigious Healer of all pains, be it mental or physical. But her price is steep. A young man is breaking under the burden of his shapeshifter heritage, and the deadly unknown disease eating away at his brother.<br/>“Why are you so weird?” His eyes speak childish curiosity, but they are mocking her as well. Her lips quirk up into a smile. “You laugh at me because I’m different. I laugh at you, because you’re all the same.”<br/>Oh, how wrong they both were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Selfish By Nature

**Author's Note:**

> I really shouldn't be writing this; especially since I haven't even come close to completing Chasing Ghosts... but hey, an idea is an idea and I couldn't help myself. Let it never be said I was a master of self-control. 
> 
> \- Asura

Pain is everywhere. From a man’s darkest memories to the first time he holds his little child and the gravity of how old he truly is hits him. The moment he realizes he’ll die one day, and generations later, no one will even remember his name.

 

What if, someone said, that they could take all the pain out of you? From the sinking feeling when your lover leaves you to the hour you see the light leave your mother’s eyes?

 

 _Impossible_ , they said. _Ridiculous; you’ve lost your mind._

This is the scenario in a little pub off the side of the street in the lonely town of Marianne.

 

An elderly man stands quietly, taking all the jeers and laughter being thrown at him. A black-clad figure stands behind him with her hand clasped tightly in his wrinkled one. She is drawing out the mild humiliation and irritation that she feels darken the corners of his mind.

 

The negativity seeps into her.

 

“Come now, lads.” The elder gives a pacifying smile once the catcalls have calmed down. “Let’s give it a shot. Any volunteers?”

The pub is silent.

They wonder how he managed to get such a young child into the place, anyway.

 

“What utter bull, old man.” a tall, hulking man with a hooked nose snorts. “I’ll give your little delusion a try, just to humour ya.” He gives a leering smile to the figure clad in black cloak, and she stiffens under his derisive gaze.

 

She knows, once the cloak is off, they will run to their mothers wailing of witches and sirens with no glamour.

 

The old man claps his shoulder jovially, and held out a hand to the child.

“Sheba, my love, won’t you show these men what wonders you’re capable of?” he hums softly, and after a moment’s hesitation, a small hand slipped into his.

 

His answering grin is triumphant.

 

“Take her hand now, my man!” the elderly voice raises in excitement. “And recall your worst memory!”

 

She feels the roughened hand slip through hers, warm but not comforting. He squeezes too tight, his nails too long against her delicate child-like flesh.

 

And there are thoughts in her head, unbidden and like a tidal wave, in broken patches with the voices too high, like a telly tuned wrong.  
The man is thinking about the day he finds his wife in bed with another man. She shudders. This is wrong. She should not be seeing such a private scene; two bodies, sweat-slicked and gasping voices and moans and broken- it’s all broken up into small sporadic bursts of memory and she wants to vomit.

 

But she needs to do this, must prove herself to the world. Word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire in small places such as this.

 

And Sheba focuses. She focuses not on the memory itself, but the emotions accompanying it. Fear, shock, disbelief, anger- her childish vocabulary cannot come up with enough words to describe his feelings. But sadness is predominant. It is a sadness that makes her want to cry, a sadness born of having loved and lost.

She didn’t think such men were capable of such feelings.

 

Above her bent head, the men are hushed. They hold their breaths, fickle in their opinions- now more sure that this young girl is a prodigy somehow; a witch with extraordinary powers because the man is crying silently. Tears slip down his hooked nose as the feelings of that fateful night almost eight years ago and pulled back up to the surface.  
He is unseeing ahead of him, and now the old man gently touches his arm to draw him back.

 

He blinks and laughs roughly, attempting to blink the tears away. “Damn, those memories’re stronger than I remember...”

 

“Think of something positive now.” the elder commands, and the man scowls.

 

A sudden thought comes to the girl’s mind; not hers. She sees herself leaving school in a white departure gown, and cheering with the boys around her.

 

She is elated, so proud and pleased and _joyous_ at the thought of achieving something so important as graduating school.

 

The happiness is sucked out of the memory and Sheba returns to the bed-scene as she has dubbed it. She imagines a white box in her mind, and imagines putting that memory into a box. It swirls and is pulled down like water into a drain.

 

A blank space remains.

 

Sweat is beading at her forehead, body burning and scorching her from inside-out. She had told him she could not do this. He placed too much trust in her. Twisting someone’s memories, replacing them, making them forget- she was not enough. She could not. But she had to try; had to impress them.

 

Sheba now concentrates on the happiness and once again, imagines it filling up the blank space like ink in water. Always water. She could always calm herself with thoughts of water.

 

Her heart is thumping hard, a smile tearing at her lips as the elation affects her as well.

The hooked-nose man is gaping at her. He doesn’t understand. His mind is blank, like a clean slate. No thoughts exist in his head, nothing. No memories. She has seemed to have wiped it all out.

 

And it returns slowly. Like bright headlights nearing on a dark night, coming closer to you while you are frozen.

 

It hits him with the force of a speeding truck.

 

His mother smiling at him, failing three classes, graduating, friends, the marriage, a stillborn child, his wife with another man- a feeling of contentment. _Everything._

 

But now two memories are distorted. His graduation seems a dull thing, like an unimportant memory his brain had kept for keepsakes.

And the memory of that night. He remembers opening the door, and suddenly, he is back out with his mates, laughing and gallivanting around the town in their white robes and there is so, so much exhilaration coursing through him, he can’t breathe with how happy he feels.

 

Two identical memories, almost twenty years apart. Two identical memories, different emotions. It was eerie.

 

The child speaks softly, “That will always happen. Every time you think of her like that, you will remember something else. You won’t feel that pain anymore.”

 

And the man is hugging her, sobbing into her cloak and whispering _thank you, thank you, thank you_ over and over again and Sheba is oddly touched. So pleased that she has made a difference to his existence.

“How did you do it?” he asks, tears staining his sallow cheeks and there are gasps all around and men are cheering, thumping the old man on the back and the hooked-nose man sees a strangely sardonic smile curve from under the cloak.

 

Too young for such an emotion.

 

“Magic.” she whispers, and faints.

 

There are hands all around to catch her; to catch hold and touch the new angel that has come into their dreary little town.

  
  
  
  



End file.
